Colin Hay
Colin Hay
Colin James Hayis a Scottish Australian musician and actor who made his mark during the 1980s as lead vocalist of the Australian band Men at Work, and later as a solo artist. Hay's music has been frequently used by actor and director Zach Braff in his work, subsequently leading to a career rebirth in the mid-2000s...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth29 June 1953
CountryAustralia
careers erratic minutes
I had a very erratic career. I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know?
song writing rocks
I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.
player guitar want
I just want to be a better guitar player, really.
play empty-rooms rooms
I play in a lot of empty rooms.
writing ideas sometimes
I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas.
song men thinking
The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time.
couple people tunes
Most people remember me for a couple of tunes.
mean years careers
I had a very strange career. I mean I went from playing to 150,000 people in 1983/84. Three or four years later I was playing to four people, you know, in Melbourne. I thought - bit strange, you know bit odd, bit erratic.
drinking used shows
I used to drink a lot. I had to stop drinking because it was getting the better of me, and I replaced that with really doing shows.
trying get-better want
Sometimes there's a general arc that you want to try and get better the longer you do something.
writing thinking always-trying
As you get older you don't want to just do the same thing, otherwise there's not much point. I think it's more or less trying to write things that, perhaps, say more by doing less, or you're always trying to refine things, make things a little simpler, a little more essential.
song writing feel-good
I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.
guitar play ideas
I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.
song play kind
I like to let the songs speak so that they can go through some kind of rebirth as you play them.